Samantha Lang has seen a lot of the world. Italy, Alaska, Tahiti, New Zealand — the list reads like a well-stamped passport and shows no sign of stopping. Next January, she is headed to Antarctica. So, it is perhaps surprising that it took a stretch of red dirt in the middle of her own country to stop her in her tracks.

“You think you know how big it’s going to be,” she says of Uluru. “And then you get there, and it’s something else entirely. Almost spiritual. I can’t think of anywhere else in the world that gives you that same feeling.”

She made the trip with her mother, Karen, the latest in a long line of adventures the two have shared. Wherever they go, the approach is the same: explore as much as possible, try everything, photograph everything, and find new friends along the way. But for Samantha, the Red Centre carried a weight that most destinations don’t. She has Indigenous heritage on her father’s side, and standing in this country felt different to anywhere else she has been.

Samantha booked the Outback Spirit Red Centre Explorer, an eight-day journey from Alice Springs to Uluru, taking in the West MacDonnell Ranges, Kings Canyon and Watarrka along the way. It was Outback Spirit’s “Australian relaxed luxury” that drew her in. What she didn’t expect was how much the people around her would become part of the experience. Fellow travellers who shared the same enthusiasm, the same humour, and who appreciated the landscape as much as she did.

What she keeps returning to is the colour. The orange dirt against the green trees against that blue sky, a palette so vivid it looked almost unreal. The Bruce Munro light installations at Kings Canyon and Uluru stayed with her, too, the kind of art that only makes sense in the middle of nowhere and somehow makes the nowhere feel even bigger.

The guides helped with that. Samantha and Karen made a habit of asking how long they had at each stop, then making the most of every minute, shooting off for photos and back before the coach left. The tour accommodates all paces, she notes quickly. Some guests preferred to take things slowly, and nobody felt they were missing out.

For someone with a family cruise, a European river voyage and Antarctica all pencilled in over the next twelve months, the Red Centre has a pull that is hard to explain. “Completely different to anything I’ve done in Australia,” she says. “Something everyone has to experience at least once. And I would absolutely go back.”